the big changes Hackney: was Lab 52 Con 5, now Grn 42 Lab 9 (Labour since 2002) Havering: was Con 23 Ind 20, now Ref 39 Ind 14 (Reform's first London council) Lewisham: was Lab 54 (clean sweep), now Grn 40, Lab 14 (Labour since 2010) Waltham Forest: was Lab 47 Con 13, now Grn 31, Lab 15 Con 14 (Labour since 2010) Westminster: was Lab 31 Con 23, now Con 32 Lab 22 (also Conservative 1964-2022)
Three of the gains are by the Greens, one by the Conservatives and one by Reform.
Six different parties are in control across London.
The only 'clean sweep' council is Richmond which is 100% Lib Dem.
Havering is the only borough where the number of Reform councillors reached double figures. Four years ago Labour won 21 councils outright, this year only nine.
slipping into No Overall Control Barnet: Con 31, Lab 31, Grn 1 (Green councillor holds balance of power) Brent: Lab 26, Lib 11, Con 11, Grn 9 (Labour three short) Croydon: Lab 30, Con 28, Grn 8, Lib 2, Ref 2 (Conservative Mayor in charge) Enfield: Con 31, Lab 27, Grn 5 (Conservatives 1 short) Haringey: Grn 28, Lab 20, Lib 8, Ind 1 (Greens 1 short) Lambeth: Grn 29, Lab 26, Lib 8 (Greens 3 short) Newham: Lab 26, Ind 24, Grn 16 (Labour Mayor in charge) Southwark: Lab 29, Grn 22, Lib 12 (Labour since 2010) Wandsworth: Con 29, Lab 28, Ind 1 (former Conservative councillor holds balance of power)
Four years ago only Croydon was No Overall Control. This year there are nine NOC boroughs.
five Mayoralties
Cro
Hac Gain
Lew Gain
New
Tow
Croydon was very close: Con 31%, Lab 30%, Grn 17%, Ref 13% Hackney's gone very Green: Grn 47%, Lab 35% Lewisham went Green too: Grn 40%, Lab 35% Newham stayed red: Lab 30%, Ind 24%, Grn 23% Tower Hamlets re-elected Lutfur: Asp 39%, Lab 21.1%, Grn 20.9%
In Tower Hamlets it would have taken the combined vote of Labour and the Greens to oust Lutfur Rahman, so he's safely back for his fourth term.
The last government ended Supplementary Votes in Mayoral elections.
This year it's First Past The Post, so you get what you get. (but it'll be Supplementary Vote again next time because the law changed last week)
The Conservatives won the Croydon Mayoralty by just 1100 votes.
In 2022 second preferences narrowed the Con/Lab gap in Croydon by 1600 votes.
So it's entirely possible that Labour would have won this year under the old system.
Meanwhile near London
Lib: West Surrey, East Surrey, Watford
Ref: Thurrock
Con: Broxbourne, Harlow
Meanwhile in Birmingham
Ref 22, Grn 19, Lab 17, Con 16, Ind 13, Lib 12, tbc 2
which is an uncoalitionable six-way mess
8pm update
Tower Hamlets council seats have finally been counted.
Lutfur's party Aspire has taken the lion's share of seats, 33 out of 45.
Labour and the Greens each took 5 seats on a near-identical share of the vote.
All the Green seats are in Bow, indeed all Bow's councillors are Green.
The Stratford & Bow constituency spans two boroughs.
It currently has a Labour MP.
However as of today it only has one Labour councillor.
16 of the constituency's 22 councillors are Green.
So I guess that makes us a top Green target in 2029!
In 1879 all London was gripped by the gruesome murder of a widow in this Richmond cottage. The subsequent trial heard how Julia Martha Thomas had been choked to death by her maidservant, the body then dismembered, boiled and thrown headless into the Thames. The torso washed up downstream a few days later and Kate Webster was duly condemned to hang at Wandsworth Prison. But the remains were never formally identified as Julia's, not until 2010 when the octogenarian who owned the house nextdoor started work on an extension and a skull was unexpectedly unearthed. Today of all days, it's quite a tale.
Julia Martha Thomas was a former schoolteacher in her mid-50s who lived alone at 2 Mayfield Cottages in Park Road, Richmond. She'd had several maids, not many of whom had found her easy to work for, and in January 1879 made a fresh appointment on the recommendation of a friend. Alas people couldn't check references in those days and there was plenty about Kate Webster to be concerned about. She'd grown up in County Wexford and by the age of 15 had already been imprisoned for larceny. At 18 she moved to Liverpool and was imprisoned for larceny there, this time a four year sentence. She then moved to Hammersmith (another 18 months) and Teddington (another twelve months), and by the time of her Richmond appointment had already spent a fifth of her life in penal servitude. If only Julia had known.
The two women didn't get on, Julia finding Kate too lax and Kate finding Julia too strict. After only five weeks Kate was given warning to leave but wangled a few extra days, only to head to the alehouse on the last afternoon rather than accompanying Julia to church. A furious argument ensued during which Julia was pushed down the stairs, and things went rapidly downhill from there.
Mrs. Thomas came in and went upstairs. I went up after her, and we had an argument, which ripened into a quarrel, and in the height of my anger and rage I threw her from the top of the stairs to the ground floor. She had a heavy fall, and I became agitated at what had occurred, lost all control of myself, and, to prevent her screaming and getting me into trouble, I caught her by the throat, and in the struggle she was choked, and I threw her on the floor.
I determined to do away with the body as best I could. I chopped the head from the body with the assistance of a razor which I used to cut through the flesh afterwards. I also used the meat saw and the carving knife to cut the body up with. I prepared the copper with water to boil the body to prevent identity; and as soon as I had succeeded in cutting it up I placed it in the copper and boiled it. I opened the stomach with the carving knife, and burned up as much of the parts as I could.
Kate stashed most of the body parts in a wooden chest and a Gladstone bag, but one foot wouldn't fit so she chucked it in a rubbish heap in Twickenham, and the skull she buried behind the pub at the top of the road. The chest proved too heavy to move so she asked a friend's son to help her drag it to the station, and as they were crossing Richmond Bridge contrived to push it into the water. Such were her silver-tongued skills that none of this aroused any suspicions. Unfortunately for Kate the chest washed up at Barnes Bridge the following morning where it was spotted by a coal porter and taken to the police. But at this stage nobody could identify the body, not even when the spare foot was discovered, so the unidentified remains were laid to rest in Barnes Cemetery, case closed.
Kate might have got away with her crime had she not taken to dressing up as Mrs Thomas while selling off the contents of the house. She returned to her former stomping ground in Hammersmith and met up with the publican of The Rising Sun public house who agreed to take away all the furniture for the sum of £68. But when he turned up in Richmond with his cart and asked to meet with 'Mrs Thomas' - yes that's her - the neighbours spotted the deception. Kate realised the game was up, fleeing post haste back to Ireland aboard a coal steamer.
I did deviate to Hammersmith to take a look at The Rising Sun, homing in on 20 Cardross Street, but the pub closed in the 1960s and has been converted to a private home. Also the new owners had got the builders in, gutting the interior to add a rear extension and loft conversion, continuing my bad luck this week of visiting historic buildings temporarily under wraps. So, back to Richmond.
When police turned up at Mayfield Cottages they discovered several blood stains, burnt finger-bones in the hearth and dubious fatty deposits behind the copper. Kate had also been careless enough to leave behind a letter giving her home address in Ireland, and although she was actually hiding out at her uncle's farm the Irish police consulted her criminal record and caught her there anyway. Kate was brought back to England for a first hearing at Richmond Magistrates Court and then, as public interest in the case grew exponentially, a full trial at the Old Bailey.
The case opened on 2nd July 1879 with Kate denying everything, instead attempting to shift blame to the Hammersmith publican and her friends who'd helped carry the chest. But several witnesses came forward to help piece together the real story, with some even claiming Webster had sold them pots of lard and dripping rendered from boiled human fat. The case lasted six days, accompanied by much hysterical reporting in the press, with the jury taking just an hour and a quarter to find her guilty. Kate attempted to dodge the death penalty by claiming she was pregnant, the judge forced to employ a team of twelve matrons to confirm she wasn't. Only on the night before her execution did she finally confess all, and at 9am the next morning Wandsworth's hangman took her life.
The contents of 2 Mayfield Cottages were duly auctioned, with the Hammersmith publican successful in gaining most of the furniture including the knife with which Mrs Thomas had been dismembered. Daytrippers flocked to the backstreets of Richmond Hill just to see the cursed house, and nobody would live in it until almost twenty years had passed. Madame Tussauds swiftly created a wax effigy and placed it in their Chamber of Horrors, thus well into the 20th century Kate Webster still appeared alongside Dr Crippen, Burke and Hare. This is what happens when you brutally dismember your employer and are utterly useless at covering your tracks.
Park Road eventually returned to normal, indeed became a desirable address. These days Mayfield Cottages make a smart pair bedecked with shrubbery and wisteria, while nextdoor is a gorgeous blue-painted house whose garden path wends between several lush specimens. But Julia's skull remained undiscovered for well over a century, that is until the local pub - The HoleIn The Wall - went up for sale. The owner of the blue house was worried it might become flats so bought it for himself and transformed it into a library. During the renovation work in 2010 a "dark circular object" was uncovered which turned out to be a woman's skull. Not only was it fractured but the bone also had low collagen levels, as would be expected after boiling. No DNA confirmation was possible as Thomas had no known offspring but the coroner concluded yes this was indeed the last piece of the mystery.
The blue house has been owned by the same man for over 70 years, bought in 1952 when he was a humble trainee BBC producer. You know him well, he's Sir David Attenborough and today is the widely-celebrated occasion of his 100th birthday. He says he'd never live anywhereelse thanks to the unbeatable combination of a temperate climate, a cultured city and the glories of Richmond Park barely a five minute walk away. And here he's returned after all the great projects of his lifetime, from commissioning The Old Grey Whistle Test to making Life On Earth, back to the cosy home sandwiched between a notorious crime scene and the burial place of a fractured skull. Not just a great naturalist and TV executive but the unlikely solver of a murder mystery even older than he is.
This week I also spent 10 minutes at Morden South station.
And I have more questions.
Why is nobody else here?
That's because Morden South is the fifth least-used station in London with just 76,000 passengers a year, or 200 a day. Hence you walk in and the place is usually deserted, not even a member of staff to keep an eye on things, just an elevated island platform and some butterflies.
Where is everyone?
They're ten minutes up the road at Morden tube station which has 8 million passengers a year. That's because it has trains every two or three minutes to central London whereas Morden South has unreliable dawdly trains that take 40 minutes to get to Blackfriars and only run every half hour. Of course you'd go to Morden instead.
What went wrong?
In the 1920s two railway companies competed to bring services to this part of London and, following Parliamentary disapproval, had to agree to share the spoils. The City & Southern, which later became the Northern line, was only allowed as far as Morden. Meanwhile the Southern Railway got to build its line all the way to Sutton, thereby denying all those beyond Morden a decent service even 100 years later.
Why the pink stripes?
I think it's a Thameslink thing. I don't think it's a current Thameslink thing.
Is it just me who gets Merton and Morden muddled up?
It really doesn't help having two consecutive stations called South Merton and Morden South. Things were a lot simpler pre-suburbia when Merton and Morden were very distinct places. Then new station names distorted things, so for example the original village of Merton now has a station called South Wimbledon, the original village of Morden is best served by St Helier and the tube station at Morden is immediately opposite Merton Civic Centre.
How many other London stations are two anagrammable words?
In this case that's Modern Shout. The next double-anagrammable station is just up the line at Shout Mentor, whereas the best we can do at Wimbledon Chase is Bowelmind Aches and that's not proper.
What is that typeface?
It is perhaps two typefaces, one for the station name, the other for the signs. I really like the former.
What's it like inside the humungous mosque nextdoor?
This is a question I wondered last year, which is why for Open House I took up the offer of an hour-long tour within. It's a vast complex, built 20 years ago on the site of a former Express Dairy and reopened in 2023 after a nasty fire. One end feels more like a conference centre and events venue, the far end has the prayer hall with space for 6000 worshippers, and once you get past the metal detectors the main walkway is both florally and geometrically impressive.
How many types of automated parcel lockers are there?
I ask because there are two sets of parcel lockers at the entrance to the station, one branded InPost, the other Amazon. A few steps away at Morden Sorting Office the lockers are Royal Mail specific, whereas it's over a mile to the nearest Evri lockers at the Lord Nelson. Is that the full set?
Apparently this is a Category C step-free station. What are these categories? Category A: step-free access to all platforms Category B1: step-free access to all platforms but may include long/steep ramps or street-level interchange Category B2: some step-free access to all platforms (not as good as B1) Category B3: step-free access to fewer than the total number of platforms Category C: no step-free access to any platform
What's the point of a Meeting Point?
At busy stations, sure, but here? Nobody's going to miss spotting someone at a near-ghost station with one entrance and one island platform.
How long before most rail replacement buses are scrapped?
The Rail Replacement Bus Information poster at Morden South says 'when trains are unable to run...dedicated rail replacement buses will not serve this station'. Cheers for that. I know it's a little-used line but it's hardly fair to make people pay more for their usual journey, and alas increasingly so.
Do City AM end up throwing most of their papers away?
Mid-morning, well after any commuters would have passed through, I counted about 80 pristine copies of City AM in the hopper by the bus stop. Most of these are never going to be read, they'll just be binned the following morning when the next edition arrives. City AM has a certified daily circulation of 68,338, but how many of those are actually read?
Why do National Rail stations display out-of-date bus spider maps?
The spider map at Morden South is dated September 2015 and shows five local routes. The three that stop outside are still correct but the other two were both changed in March 2024, thus the map is misleading. I found a much worse spider map at Barnes Bridge station yesterday, dated August 2014 and still showing six routes crossing Hammersmith Bridge. Were these TfL stations the maps would have been removed without replacement, but maybe it's a good thing to still have something even if it's not correct.
Could they rewild more station platforms?
Beyond the canopy the centre of the island platform has been left to seed, so at this time of year a long green strip is alive with grasses, wild flowers and butterflies. It's lovely to stand beside, especially when your next train could be a very long time away. How many other unused bits of platforms around London could be enlivened this way?
Who is the sanctimonious moral crusader?
All the stations down this loop have laminated messages stuck to the shelters urging station users to behave better. [Today's fun of Vandalising is tomorrow's unsafe Station and Locality. BE SAFE!] I think only Morden South has the full set of four. [Your Local Station reflects YOU! Let's be proud and keep it clean!] [This is your Local station. Why Graffiti/Destroy? It only reflects you!] Whose self-righteous idea was this? [If we want the world to change, we first have to change Ourselves] If I had a spraycan, I think these misjudged posters are the first thing I'd smother.
It's the local elections tomorrow and London is electing borough councillors.
Here are snapshots of five election leaflets, three of which came through my letterbox and two of which are from opposite sides of London.
This is from the Greens in Bow East.
The bar graph is a fairly staple local election trope, essentially confirming "we are the only credible alternative". For context Bow East currently has a full contingent of three Labour councillors. However Labour don't run Tower Hamlets because Lutfur Rahman does, nor do Labour have the most councillors overall. It's thus a bit rich to say "If you're fed up with Labour..." because locally they run nothing.
The message is similar to Reform UK's slogan for the local elections which is GET STARMER OUT, despite the fact you're not voting for him at all. Both parties are simply piggybacking on the unpopularity of the national party in the hope of getting elected on a tidal wave of negativity... a tactic which might well be successful.
However I'm much more concerned about the graph. Supposedly it shows a projection for Bow East, as calculated in April by the website britain.votes.now.
I was intrigued enough to visit the website where I checked what the figures were... and they were nothing like those displayed in the leaflet. Here's my graph of what they actually said.
The data-bashers at britain.votes.now expect Labour to get 37% of the vote and the Greens 28%. This is not just the other way round to the graph in the leaflet, it's a Labour lead of 9% rather than a Green lead of 1%. I checked the website last week when the leaflet arrived and the data hasn't changed since, it's been resolutely 37%/28%/23%/5%/4%/3% all the time.
The britain.votes.now website also has a separate tab for the 'Win probability' in every ward. Here they assign 65% to Labour winning, 23% to the Greens and 12% to Aspire, i.e. they're fairly convinced Bow East will be a Labour victory. It might not be because that's how elections and probability work, but I saw nothing at britain.votes.now to support the graph in my election leaflet.
I emailed the Tower Hamlets Green Party last week asking them to explain but they haven't bothered responding. Perhaps they're preoccupied by their prospects nextdoor in Bow West where britain.votes.now does indeed give the Greens a victory probability of 65%. But here in Bow East, either the Greens have misinterpreted the data or they've drawn a deliberately misleading graph.
This leaflet is from Aspire, Lutfur Rahman's party. I haven't chopped anything off.
The leaflet is essentially just a huge ballot paper with instructions for how to vote for Lutfur as Mayor. It even explains what 'vote' means in three different languages. The back is much the same but instead shows how to vote for the three Aspire councillors locally. It's pretty much entirely 'how to vote for us', not why.
To be fair, Lutfur sent a whopping 4-page list of achievements separately a few weeks ago and this is merely leaflet number 2. But it does feel like a guide for people who don't understand what politics is about, perhaps due to language issues or lack of interest, thus something you could give to a compliant family member before nudging them towards a voting booth. It's not illegal, but it is an illuminating example of Lutfur's ability to get his vote out.
Labour's candidate for Mayor of Tower Hamlets took a different approach, sending me a two-page personally-addressed letter.
Page 1 mostly says you can't trust Lutfur to run the council properly whereas you can trust Sirajul. Page 2 then explains that Lutfur can be beaten but only if everyone who doesn't want him comes together and votes Labour instead. It's heartfelt but I can't see it happening, indeed this year I'd say Labour doesn't have a hope.
This leaflet is from Reform in Ickenham.
I wasn't given it, I found it on the pavement partially torn. For context the Conservatives won over half the vote in Ickenham and South Harefield four years ago, and britain.votes.now assigns them a 95% probability of winning again.
The first paragraph includes the line "Like many of you, we have become increasingly concerned about the direction our community is headed". However it's not stated what that direction is, it's left to the reader to fill in the gaps. The wider genius of Reform's messaging is also evident in their nationwide slogan REFORM CAN FIX IT, where 'IT' could be potholes, poverty, immigration or whatever makes you think they're on your side.
Paragraph 2 bashes the existing council, including the fact its leader is paid considerably more than the Prime Minister. When you have 2500 employees and are responsible for the wellbeing of 320,000 residents, perhaps that's just the going rate. This section also references "£199,000 paid on translation services for those who refuse to integrate", and you can almost hear the dog whistle there, that's how loud it is.
Overall the leaflet is really non-specific, right down to "ensuring your best interests are served at the council" without spelling out what that means. That's populism for you, but potentially a very successful approach at a time when people just want change.
Finally to Hornchurch where I was handed this leaflet outside Sainsbury's.
It's from the Residents Association because they do things differently in Havering, indeed the HRA currently run the borough as a minority administration. Hence you can feel their frustration when they kick things off by pointing out it's a local election, not a national or regional one. The councillors elected this week will be in charge of libraries, social care and community safety, not immigration, housing targets and ULEZ.
They also weigh in on Reform by pointing out that "a vote for Essex" is Party Political nonsense, listing all the things residents might lose if that nostalgic pipedream were ever implemented.
It must be frustrating for councillors (of all parties) who work hard to do their best for the local community, only to be voted out of office by people with no understanding of what's been achieved. Because people will still walk into the polling booth on Thursday and vote on national issues, or because they hate the Mayor of London, rather than for whoever might be best at emptying the bins. Local elections are all too often the wrong kind of popularity contest, same as it ever was.
Yesterday I spent 10 minutes around Ravensbourne station.
And I have more questions.
I wonder how many Londoners know where Ravensbourne station is?
It's not named after a town or suburb so Ravensbourne isn't a terribly helpful name. It could be anywhere unless you live locally or are good at London geography. But I do genuinely want to know how many of you know where it is so I've set up an online poll, here. Options are 'Yes, near enough' and 'Not really'. Please only vote if you live in London or have lived in London. Don't waste your time telling us in the comments, just tell the poll. After 375 votes (thanks!): 58% of you say yes, you knew where it was
How best to describe where Ravensbourne station is?
1 mile northwest of Bromley, the stop between Beckenham Hill and Shortlands, on the edge of Beckenham Place Park, very very close to the southernmost point in Lewisham but in Bromley, at the bottom of Crab Hill, southeast London, here.
How did Crab Hill get its name?
Genuine question, I don't know. You say: named after Crab Apple Field, formerly at the top of the hill
What's the point of just one platform having step-free access?
It's OK, we answered this one at Hadley Wood. But same thing here, an easy-to-install ramp in one direction and horrible stairs on the other.
That sign outside's unusual isn't it?
It wouldn't have been unusual in its day, which would have been when Oyster was still new and worth shouting about. They're a Southeastern thing I think. But how many of these old-ish signs, which even include the zone number, linger across the network?
How many other London stations are named after rivers?
Not many, I reckon. On the tube map I can find six with a river's name in the title (Brent Cross, Brent Cross West, Roding Valley, Stamford Brook, Wandle Park and Westbourne Park) but none where the station name is a one-word river. Maybe Ravensbourne is the only example in the UK? In London also: Lea Bridge, Brent (1923-1976), City Thameslink (maybe), Kidbrooke (sort of) Outside London:Trent (1862- 1968), Thames Ditton, Dovey Junction
How many of these lovely green fingerposts are there?
This one went up in the 2000s to signpost routes along the Green Chain Walk, also to show how to get to the Capital Ring, and has a trademark loopy circle on top that says Crab Hill. Nobody would find the funding for anything similar these days. I know there's another one in the middle of Beckenham Place Park, indeed I've seen several across London. But how many in total would you say... near enough thirty, approximately fifty or rather more than that? Answer: 156 on the Green Chain alone (and more elsewhere), thanks Ian
How many people have died because a defibrillator has a keypad?
It's brilliant that we have defibrillators all over the place these days, and also a sad fact of life that they have to be locked away to prevent stealing or vandalism. But when you have to ring 999 to get the keypad code, then push the buttons correctly to open the thing, how many incredibly valuable seconds does that waste and how many lives are lost as a result?
Is there anywhere else in London you can still find Thursday's City AM at the end of the weekend?
Obviously City AM doesn't publish on Bank Holidays, and obviously financial news isn't to everyone's taste. But it can't be a good business model to still have copies left over four days later. Most hoppers across London always empty out so why not here? Also these hoppers are shared with The (Evening) Standard who normally bin the City AMs on Thursday afternoon, so why doesn't the Standard bother with Beckenham? Very much target audience, I'd have thought.
Why does Ravensbourne station still have a ticket office?
It's amongst the 25 least used stations in London and has fewer passengers annually than every tube station in London. But Ravensbourne still has a ticket office (in a nasty fortified cabin added following a fire in 1988) which opens on weekdays from 06:40 to 13:20. I love a nice staffed station but it can't really need seven hours of ticket sales, not in 2026.
How do teensy coffee kiosks make a profit?
This one's tiny, just a mini-shed with a coffee machine and space to operate it. A selection of cold drinks are rammed into the doorway and a few chocolates and mints sit on shelves outside. That's basically all there is so I guess rental should be low. OK so there are 400 commuters passing through every morning, also a lot of dogwalkers heading into the park, but not everyone buys a drink. I know Aziz has been running this particular nameless kiosk for 12 years so it must provide a living, but it always seems economically miraculous that selling coffee in the middle of suburban nowhere can actually turn a profit.
What's the obsession with MIND THE GAP signs on the Catford Loop?
About 10 years ago they plastered big yellow MIND THE GAP signs all along the platforms from Crofton Park to Ravensbourne - there are at least two dozen here, far more than signs telling you the station's name. Safety necessity or complete overload?
Is this how they clean station platforms these days?
It's a woman with what looks like a leaf blower hoovering up dirt from the southbound platform. Interestingly she was doing the same at Beckenham Hill a few minutes earlier so I guess she hops onto the train to work her way down the line. Half an hour between trains means every station gets 30 minutes of cleaning and only one person needs to be employed - bargain!
Why is this Lewisham parish marker not on the borough boundary?
This smoothed metal post is dated 1883 and marks what used to be the edge of London. I found it up a short slope just inside the park, a spot that's now entirely within Lewisham because the borough boundary has been realigned to the edge of the park. Old maps suggest there was another post beside the station because one end of the platform was in Kent and the other wasn't, but I suspect that's long gone.
Is Beckenham Place Park Lewisham's finest park?
It has tough competition, but I suspect yes.
Does anyone ever follow the Beckenham Place Park Nature Trail?
Maybe they did when it was new and there might have been actual leaflets, but what about now? I'd be amazed if anyone spots a tiny yellow circle on a post, does a search for 'Beckenham Place Park Nature Trail' on their phone and then follows it. That's particularly true here because The Friends of Beckenham Place Park wound up in 2023, their website is on its last legs and the relevant file comes with a security warning. So many directional signs linger on around the UK far longer than their physical descriptions.
How did everyone in Beckenham know about yesterday's Vintage Market in the park?
The sheer number of people I passed heading into the park to look at the trinkety stalls by the mansion, it was almost like Blackheath Fireworks crowds used to be. The Vintage Market's been going for 10 years so maybe that helps explain the numbers but it doesn't open regularly, only seasonally, neither did I see any big advertisements at the Beckenham end. In these days of random reels and printlessness, how do people discover events like this are happening?
How long can I keep up this 'station questions' theme?
London has 600+ stations so I could keep this up for well over a year, but don't worry I won't.
100 years ago today this was the most important building in the country.
It's 32 Eccleston Square in Pimlico, just round the corner from Victoria station.
Sorry about the scaffolding, that's temporary.
But in May 1926 it was the headquarters of the Trades Union Congress.
And it was here that the General Strike was called, bringing the nation to a halt for nine days.
No struggle like it has ever happened since.
The build-up
It was the miners that started it, or rather the mining companies, or perhaps Sir Winston Churchill. In 1925 as Chancellor he restored Britain to the Gold Standard, thereby raising exchange rates and dampening global demand for exports. This made the mining industry even less profitable than it had been so the private companies that ran the mines looked for ways to make efficiencies. They decided to pay miners less and extend their working day which plainly the mining unions weren't happy with, their campaign slogan being ‘Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day.’ Stanley Baldwin's government subsidised the industry for a further nine months before concurring in April 1926 that change was indeed needed and wages should drop by 13%. Talks broke down on 1st May so the TUC announced that a general strike "in defence of miners' wages and hours" should begin at one minute to midnight on Monday 3rd May. The actual centenary was thus technically yesterday but nobody would have noticed any ill effects until 100 years ago today.
The TUC
The TUC was founded in Manchester in the 1860s, in part because workers wanted a collective voice that wasn't London-centric. It grew to represent a broad coalition of trade-based bodies, initially focused on influencing government policy but by the 1920s keener on developing its own activities. The TUC moved into 32 Eccleston Square shortly after WW1, back when everything could still be coordinated from a single Georgian townhouse, and moved out to somewhere bigger in 1930. An open architectural competition then led to the opening of their current HQ in March 1958, the Grade II* listed Congress House.
The strike
Support for the General Strike was widespread and immediate, the scale of the action surprising even those who'd called for it. The National Union of Railwaymen and the Transport Workers' Federation agreed to stop all movements of coal, bringing public transport across the country to a standstill. Also showing solidarity with the miners were printers, dockers, engineers and others whose labour kept the country running, thereby bringing much of the economy to a halt.
A key issue was that newspapers could not be printed, so the TUC stepped in with a daily screed called The BritishWorker and the government countered with The British Gazette, a propaganda tool edited by Winston Churchill. The government also leaned heavily on the BBC, at this point still a private company, to broadcast its preferred version of the news.
The strike's impact was initially severe but the government had contingency plans which involved a "militia" of special constables called the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies. Picket lines were broken, supplies of newsprint for The British Worker were restricted and soon reports began circulating that men were drifting back to work. Sympathy for the cause was harder to find after a week with no wages, and on 12th May the TUC General Council walked from 32 Eccleston Square to 10 Downing Street to announce its decision to call off the strike. No guarantees were offered in response, such was the capitulation, and inevitably the mining companies did indeed impose longer hours for less pay. The General Strike was thus simultaneously a demonstration that two million working Britons were willing to stand together to fight injustice but also an unequivocable trouncing by the government.
The house
1836: The first houses are built on Eccleston Square, designed by Thomas Cubitt. 1862: Number 32 is built on the southeast side. 1863: The first owner is Lord Eustace Cecil, brother of future Prime Minister Lord Salisbury. who moved in after retiring from the Coldstream Guards and before becoming Conservative MP for South Essex. He has three children called Evelyn, Blanche and Algernon. 1895: The second owner is Duncan Pirie, a Scottish Lieutenant-Colonel who became Liberal MP for Aberdeen North. 32 Eccleston Square is already moving left. 1899: The third owner is Sir Charles John, a barrister and Clerk of the London County Council. 1920: The TUC move in, Eccleston Square no longer being the prime address it once was. 1930: Next to move in are the Rifleman’s Aid Society, a charity for army veterans 1970: ...then the Institution of Public Health Engineers 1984: ...then the National Video Corporation 1987: ... then the Inchbald School of Design 2021: Purchased by art historian Alexander Rudigier for £2,750,000
Future plans
Alexander is attempting to restore 32 Eccleston Square to its former glory as a Georgian townhouse. The majority of similar
houses within the area have been subdivided into a single flat per floor with architectural detailing removed, whereas number 32 is substantially unaltered and retains much of its original form. He's already converted it back to a residential dwelling by restoring authentic features and returning the interior to the presumed colour scheme of the first occupant. The current works are relatively minor - removing a flagpole from the facade, dismantling a metal access ladder and replacing a third floor WC with a half-height cupboard. I thank Alexander for the comprehensive documentation attached to recent planning proposals, and also curse the bad luck which means 32 will spend the centenary of the General Strike shrouded in sheeting and scaffolding.
Eccleston Square today
This is one of London's finest garden squares despite its proximity to Victoria, indeed if you stand outside number 32 you can see the Coach Station at the end of the road. The central three-acre garden houses the National Collection of Ceanothus, also several rosebeds and currently a fine wisteria tunnel. It's normally locked but next Sunday you can go in for a look round and home-made teas as part of the National Open Garden Scheme (2-5pm, £5). Eccleston Square is now prime residential estate intermingled with small independent hotels, for example the Jubilee Hotel nextdoor at number 31. Their interior is perhaps over-endowed with patriotic decor, also breakfast's not included, also we now have minimum wage legislation so none of the workers need to go on strike for pay. But what I found most intriguing about this side of the square was the blue plaque outside number 34 which simply says 'Winston Churchill lived here 1909-1913'. How ironic that the politician who did so much to smash the General Strike used to live just two doors down from where it was co-ordinated.
Legacy
The General Strike didn't end well for the TUC and for British miners it was catastrophic. They ended up working longer hours for less, at least until nationalisation in 1947, having endured nine days without pay essentially for nothing. These days the TUC puts a more positive spin on the General Strike, saying it reinforced the importance of trade unions as a collective voice for workers and helped shape the labour movement for the next century. However when miners embarked on a huge strike again in 1984 the rest of the nation didn't come with them and the outcomes were even worse, smashed this time by an even more intransigent establishment. In solidarity with today's 100thanniversary the annual May Day parade will be marching from Clerkenwell to Trafalgar Square this afternoon seeking comradely change. But the days when two million workers could shut the country down, and were brotherly enough to do so, are long gone.
Yesterday I spent 20 minutes around Hadley Wood station.
And I have questions.
Is Hadley Wood London's only open air rail station sandwiched between two sets of tunnels? Whichever way you look at Hadley Wood there are proper tunnels disappearing into a steep slope. Could be the only place like this in London, but is anywhere else as tunnel-bound?
I wonder what proportion of Londoners have ever been to Hadley Wood?
Not many, you'd think, given how off-piste it is. If you count every Londoner who's ever driven from Cockfosters to Potters Bar maybe it reaches 5%. But actually the East Coast Main Line passes through, so that means everyone who's ever taken the train from King's Cross to towns and cities up north has spent a few seconds here, so maybe a majority of Londoners have been?
What's the point of just one platform having step-free access?
Hadley Wood station has two platforms in general use, only one of which has a ramp to make it step-free. I know they installed it because it was easy, whereas adding a lift to the other platform would be very expensive. But why would you... Ah, hang on, anyone intending to travel south is asked to go one stop north to Potters Bar and change there. But what a faff, and on a line where trains only run every half hour.
Why do Jehovah's Witnesses stand around beside racks of religious literature?
I know it's something that started over 10 years ago. I know they wait in groups of two or more. I know they never approach people, they wait to be approached. I know it's better for all concerned than knocking uninvited on people's doors. I know that time spent here counts towards the 'preaching hours' every Jehovah's Witness is expected to complete. On a practical level it's a waste of time, just an opportunity for a nice chat, and highly highly unlikely to lead to a new convert. And yes, many religions do entirely impractical things because they're spiritually rewarding. But is it really worth the bother?
Why is there a 'London Borough of Enfield' sign outside the station?
I know it's because many years ago the council decided to put up signs outside every station in Enfield as well as on the boundaries of the borough. It's a nice touch but no other London council bothers, so why did they decide to be different?
A heritage poster on the footbridge says 'Hadley Wood By Tram', What, they had trams here?
The tram map I found suggests that trams got no closer than High Barnet, two miles away, so it's a lovely poster but wasn't it a bit naughty?
The 399 is London's least used bus. Why do they bother?
The 399 runs in a big brief loop from Barnet to Hadley Wood and back, and last year had only 8600 passengers. That's barely 30 passengers per day, or just five passengers per journey. Those are impressively low figures. Yes the 399 is an hourly bus which only runs between 10am and 3pm, but even so. Meanwhile Hadley Wood station has 362,000 passengers annually, or 40 times as many as the bus! It's lovely that TfL provide a service for the handful of Hadley Wood's 4000 residents who don't have a car, but practically it's hardly worth bothering with.
Why does it say 299 on the back of the bus?
I know they use a vehicle off route 299 to run route 399 during shopping hours. I know they sometimes use old vehicles and have to prop up the route number on a card in the window. But if the blind on the front can say 399 why not the blind on the back? Or is the driver just being lazy?
Why does the Great North Way Cycle Route start here?
According to a sign outside the station it runs 32 miles from Hadley Wood to Letchworth Garden City. What a weird route. I found a leaflet online which is so old that the train company on the leaflet is WAGN, and they wound up in 2004. I think the idea is that you cycle one way and then ride back. Also it seems to be a Hertfordshire thing which would explain why the route barely nudges into London. But the website www.greatnorthway.org.uk is long defunct and I bet nobody's ridden it for ages so why's the sign still here?
Is Sir Nigel Gresley really the most famous person to have lived in Hadley Wood? Sir Nige is the great railway engineer who designed Flying Scotsman and Mallard. He lived here in the 1920s and Michael Portillo came to unveil a plaque outside the station in 2017. He's so famous he also has plaques in Edinburgh, York, Doncaster and Lytham St Anne's, also a statue at King's Cross. But General William Booth and Jeremy Beadle also lived here, and arguably Emma Bunton is better known than all of them but she doesn't have a plaque, yet.
Does the Nigel Gresley song have the worst lyrics of all time?
It was sung at the plaque unveiling and the lyrics are posted on the footbridge. It was written by someone who once appeared in Cats. I know it was written for kids but blimey it's dire.
What is this gorgeous typeface at 14 crescent west?
It screams postwar typography and I love it, but what is it?
Wow, this must be one of the original numberplates?
Near the station I spotted a Bentley with numberplate A74. That's amazingly early. The first registration mark 'A1' was issued by London County Council in 1903, with 'A' signifying London and subsequent numbers increasing incrementally. The plate's bound to have changed hands several times, also I have a strong suspicion it belongs to an estate agent, but what a thing to own.
How much would it cost to live here?
I checked in the window at Statons, also their online property search. They have 49 properties over £2million and just one under £500,000. So you won't be moving here soon.
Could they sacrifice the Green Belt here for housing?
If they eased the rules technically yes. It's only half an hour by train to the City, but the obvious field is also the village's only park so best not, and beyond that the London/Hertfordshire border muddies things somewhat. But technically yes, hundreds of houses would fit behind Crescent West and the existing residents would absolutely hate it.
Why did I suddenly bump into a huge group of walkers at the top of the recreation ground?
I thought I'd have a nice walk up to the woods on top of the tunnel portal while I was waiting for my train but instead bumped into lots of ramblers standing around listening to a man talk. Why would so many people come here? OK I searched and aha, it's the team at London Walks. This was the start of their 'Ultimate London Walk' from the edge of Hertfordshire to edge of Surrey, done in 14 walks over five weeks. You've missed day 1 but other dates remain, or you can book to do the whole 42 miles in a single week in September.
I also went to Emerson Park station yesterday, but I have no questions there.
12 things we learnt from TfL FoI requests in April 2026
1) The three panellists who select Poems on the Underground are Judith Chernaik (novelist, poet and critic), Imtiaz Dharker (British-Pakistani poet, artist and filmmaker) and George Szirtes (a Hungarian-British poet). 2) Initial design work for a station at Surrey Canal on the Windrush Line has now started, but as yet the required third party funding for construction has not been secured, and this would not be before 2027. 3) The underground line attracting the most noise complaints in 2023 was the Jubilee, in 2024 the Victoria, in 2025 the Northern and so far this year the Central. 4) TfL are trialling new bus shelters at 22 locations. Three are on Blackfriars Road near TfL HQ. The locations outside zone 1 are Barking station, Hampstead High Street, Harlington High Street, Kentish Town Rd, Lower Clapton Road, Maida Vale, Malden Road, Mitcham Road, Romford station, St Mary's Road, Sidcup High Street, Stockwell Road, Thornton Heath station and West Croydon station. 5) Subways which have been decommissioned since 2007 include seven at Elephant & Castle, four at Bricklayers Arms, three down Park Lane, two at Bressenden Place, also Despard Road, Foxhole Road, Lea Bridge Road, Monument Way, Neathouse Place, Old Marylebone Road, Whitechapel High Street and the Lucozade Factory. 6) The tube station with the most lift/escalator faults last year was Waterloo with 451. These took an average of 35 hours and 40 minutes to repair. 7) Don't ask TfL questions about really old stuff because "our records from 2001 to 2003 are not complete as all paper records has been disposed of, therefore we do not hold a lot of relevant documentation". 8) During the first three months of 2026 South Kenton station was left unstaffed on 42 different days. 11 of these were due to safety concerns following a ceiling leak. 9) TfL maintain six green-roofed bus shelters, five in Lewisham and one in Westminster. They have no plans to install more due to the high installation and maintenance costs and relatively low biodiversity benefit compared to other initiatives. 10) Twelve new DLR units are now at Beckton depot, even though none have been used in passenger service for the last six months. 11) The SE postcode area has 472 Oyster Retail Agents, ahead of E with 429 and N with 381. The postcode districts with just one Oyster Retail Agent are CM14, CR6, DA9, HP6, KT10, KT18, RM17, RM19, SL2 and WD3. 12) If you ask 'How many people got smacked round the head by bus wing mirrors in 2025?', TfL will refuse to respond because it would cost more than £450 to find out.
In this FoI we learn that construction costs for the whole Bow roundabout scheme were £1,882,513. We also learn that the London Borough of Newham took over management of the site on 30 March 2026.
Alas the new contraflow slip road under the flyover has never opened, despite being completed over 12 months ago, because it has potential low headroom issues.
It turns out that "the London Borough of Newham raised the risk of potential collision with the Bow flyover structure and requested a gantry was constructed to protect the structure". This was in July 2024, three months before roadworks began.
The FoI includes 40 pages of back and forth emails between TfL and Newham regarding the gantry issue. Newham said they weren't happy to proceed until they saw exactly where this gantry would go and what it would look like. They also weren't pleased that TfL's plans totally mucked up their long-term plans to add an eastbound bus lane here. TfL were mostly saying come on guys we really need to get this signed before time runs out.
TfL spent £29,861 to undertake a feasibility study into construction of the gantry, then a further £63,906 for detailed design. It would have cost £250,000 to build the gantry.
However they're not building it.
Instead "as an alternative to installing a gantry, it has been proposed to keep the slip road closed and implement a new road layout under an experimental traffic order." Implementing this "temporary permanent road layout" for six months will cost only £18,000.
In other words they intend to go ahead with Newham's bus lane proposal, the scheme the council had in mind before the roadworks started, and the slip road under the flyover will not open. Lorries exiting Marshgate Lane will have to continue turning left as they have done ever since the summer of 2024.
It seems that in TfL's keenness to get the roadworks started they built a slip road under the flyover that'll probably never be used. It took months to build because it has its own signalised junction and was the most significant part of the entire five month project. And it's all likely to be money down the drain, because it turns out a bus lane was a much better idea than a contraflow slip road all along.
The slip road under the Bow Flyover is thus, very probably, a complete white elephant. If you were inconvenienced while they were building it, it seems they were wasting your time.
Wed 1: My blogpost about TfL producing a new set of bus maps may have been an April Fool but Quickmap do a truly excellent Greater London bus map which is online here. I might have saved that jpg to my phone. Thu 2: The West Ham chunk of the Greenway may be closed until (sigh) Autumn 2028 but all the lampposts are still lit after dark, illuminating absolutely nobody.
Fri 3:Norfolk day 1: Damn I forgot to pack toothpaste. Hello to my nephew who's just moved out of London to the ancestral homeland. Impressed by my brother cutting £100 off the Easter shopping bill by using Nectar points. Sat 4:Norfolk day 2: My niece has to endure the rest of us discussing baby names. The first garden-cooked lunch of the year. Ah so that's what Acle looks like. Saturday Night Live is quite good but not worth getting Sky for. Sun 5:Norfolk Day 3: Blimey that was a stormy night (thanks Dave). Thankyou for my second-hand books. Maintain a family tradition by hiding cardboard eggs around the house. Crumble and custard please. Thickthorn roadworks are bad. Mon 6:Norfolk Day 4: The Classic FM top 300 feels overwhelmingly unchallenging. Find a government-issue box of hole reinforcers dated October 1979. Oh, I did bring my toothpaste after all but it was hiding in a side-pocket.
Tue 7: That feels like the closest the world has come to tipping into Armageddon since the last despotic madman made a lunatic threat. Thanks for letting us off with 90 minutes to go. Wed 8: I see Radio 4's Round Britain Quiz has slimmed down from six teams to four, so just eight episodes this year rather than twelve. I bet that means they can record it all in one weekend rather than two, so it's just another BBC cost-cutting measure. Thu 9: Gail's have opened a bakery branch in Stratford, admittedly in Westfield, but blimey! I remember being similarly blindsided when a Starbucks opened in Stratford in 2007. Fri 10: I forgot the freezer compartment door was open and bashed my head on it, ouch. Best not do that too often.
Sat 11: A guided ramble was gathering at Knockholt station, and this woman who'd arrived early was wondering if there was a cafe nearby. You couldn't have picked a remoter station, I said. She didn't stop talking, or worrying, so I felt sorry for the other lady who'd arrived early and was her sole audience. And this is why I don't like going on group walks. Sun 12: You'll be glad to hear that the family tortoise is getting a new run, that is unless you're my brother and you've got to make it and bolt it together before she wakes up. Mon 13: Would you like to watch tube trains moving around the network like pulsing worms? Try londonunderground.live. Tue 14: I hate it when my laptop restarts overnight and casually deletes some of the files I have open. I'd mind less if it warned me in advance.
Wed 15: I do not necessarily endorse Mr Dweeb in Crouch End, but it is a great name for a tech repair business. Thu 16: Anyone could see who this year's Apprentice winner was going to be from the very early episodes, and I suspect so could Lord Sugar, but he still trooped through twelve episodes to get there. Fri 17: Amongst the unexpected travel delays I've suffered this week a) a fire on the Westway b) a police cordon in Thornton Heath c) a logjam of traffic at Canada Water. Also innumerable bloody temporary traffic lights. Sat 18: Gah, the newspaper's gone up again, last week £4.20, now £4.50. It was only £1.30 twenty years ago.
Sun 19: Six things I didn't mention in Bishop's Stortford: i) adverts for lawnmowers on the station platform, ii) a barber shop called Hairy Wolves, iii) the relocated water fountain iv) Baron Dimsdale's memorial v) the Stortford Shuttle vi) the night in 1967 when Cream were supported by the Teapots. Mon 20: In partnership with On London, this analysis of local election prospects in all 32 boroughs is phenomenally detailed and a fascinating read. We'll see next week if it was correct. Tue 21: Had a 25th anniversary night out on the town with BestMate which kicked off at the restaurant where we used to eat in 2002, then moved on to the pub where we used to drink. We ended up at the theatre to watch the Yes Prime Minister finale, which was good but nowhere near sharp enough.
Wed 22: Every time I cross Hammersmith Bridge I see three 72 buses parked at the bus stand on the north side, which suggests this recently rejigged route is substantially over-bussed. Thu 23: Twelve days ago the tree outside my window was blazing with white blossom. Today that's all shrivelled and the branches are teeming with green leaves. The spring transition is so brief. Fri 24: In Muswell Hill I was approached by a downbeat man who told me the buses weren't running, also it's too dangerous to sit upstairs after dark, and had I heard this Irish lad got stabbed, and basically you can't go out safely because London's so dangerous these days. I told him I lived in Tower Hamlets and it wasn't edgy it was absolutely fine, but I don't think I shifted his negative worldview. Sat 25: Today I went to Chessington South, and I am very pleased with the consequences of this decision.
Sun 26: I was reminded that I don't have the football gene when a rowdy phalanx of chanting Leeds United fans boarded the train at Ruislip, absolutely pumped for the upcoming Wembley semi-final, and imagine believing in something as fervently as that. Mon 27: If you enjoyed my 2020 post about low bridge signs, Matt Parker's made a much better video in which (with the aid of a Durham maths professor) he reveals how many possible signs there are and which of the 65 nobody can find. Tue 28: Yesterday I saw a pack of 12 pens I wanted to buy, normally £20 but reduced to £13. But postage added another fiver so I thought I'd go to Covent Garden and buy it in person. Alas when I got there today a) the price was now £27 b) they'd sold out. Seize the day! Wed 29: I don't suffer from hayfever but today I was snuffling and sneezing, just for a few hours, peaking in Kennington Park. Looks like the oaks were to blame. Thu 30: How can it be a decade? Well done.
